And the Critics Say ...

Michael Connelly and Elmore Leonard were the most prominent recipients of awards given out this week by Michigan-based The Strand Magazine.

There were two categories of contenders for the 2009 Strand Magazine Critics Awards, and here are the winners:

Best Novel: Nine Dragons, by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown)

Also nominated: The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death, by Charlie Huston (Ballantine Books); Life Sentences, by Laura Lippman (Morrow); The Renegades, by T. Jefferson Parker (Dutton); and The Little Stranger, by Sarah Waters (Riverhead Books)

Best First Novel (tie): Beat the Reaper, by Josh Bazell (Little, Brown), and Starvation Lake, by Bryan Gruley (Touchstone)

Also nominated: The Manual of Detection, by Jedediah Berry (Penguin Press); A Reliable Wife, by Robert Goolrick (Algonquin Books); and Black Water Rising, by Attica Locke (Harper)

In addition, Elmore Leonard was presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award, in a ceremony introduced by editor, publisher, and bookshop proprietor Otto Penzler.

(Hat tip to The Gumshoe Site.)

Of Talking, Taping, and Twittering

Over at the e-zine Shots, a new interview has been posted with crime novelist Michael Connelly, along with the rules of a contest for readers who’d like to win one of three free copies of The Scarecrow, his recently released novel featuring newspaperman Jack McEvoy. (Sorry, but this competition is only open to UK readers.)

Connelly was among the international guests of honor attending May’s CrimeFest conference in Bristol, England. During that event, several of us who contribute to Shots (editor Mike Stotter, writer Ayo Onatade, and I) were invited to join Connelly for a midday repast. Over beer and sandwiches (a lunchtime combination I have grown to enjoy), we caught up with the American author’s most recent writing adventures, including the publication of The Scarecrow--a book whose plot I’ve previously described this way:

Following the hunt for The Poet, Connelly’s alter-ego, McEvoy, got fame with a book deal and a plum job at the L.A. Times, but life has not been easy on him. Following a divorce and the recent downsizing at his newspaper, he finds himself training a young reporter and in the process stumbles upon a crime that will lead him to battle a serial killer called the Scarecrow. In The Poet, the Internet was in its infancy, but now it is well advanced and the Scarecrow is using its dark side to terrible effect. With bodies turning up wrapped in plastic sheets in the trunks of cars, Jack has his work cut out, especially as the Scarecrow knows a lot about Jack. The interesting analogy is that the Internet is key to the novel’s plot, as not only is it being used by a serial killer, but it is also responsible for the death of news-print media.

While Stotter passed Connelly one book after another from his hold-all, and asked him to sign each one, I switched on my tape recorder to ask the author a few questions about the demise of print journalism, why he couldn’t join The Wire’s writing team, his prolific novel-writing history, and Twitter. Here’s part of our discussion:

Shots: Your Web site, www.michaelconnelly.com, has many special features with additional and bonus material for your work. How important is your Web presence?

MC: Well, it’s [Web master] Jane Davis that I need to thank, as she lets me do what I do, which is write. She does the creative stuff on the Web site and she’s good at that. She does suggest things that I write specifically for the Web site; recently I did a three-part movie [Conflict of Interest] and I had to write the script for the movie, which I handed to Jane and the filmmakers, who then took over, so it was not too intrusive on my time.

Shots: So what additional material from The Scarecrow have you online?

MC: We’re always looking for something new; we’ve done extra chapters, we[’ve] done ‘cut’ chapters, I’ve done short stories. This time we decided to do something visual. In The Scarecrow we have [FBI agent] Rachel Walling returning, but she doesn’t appear till much later on in the book, which is unusual for a main character. When I was writing it, I just couldn’t think of a way of bringing her in any earlier. Jane asked me, what has Rachel been doing prior to arriving after 140 or so pages? So I wrote a short story, which I turned into a script, and that’s the three-part movie--it has nothing to do with the Scarecrow, but deals with what she was doing before Jack called her for help. It sort of cuts across the narrative, though there are no spoilers to the book; in fact the film ends with her getting Jack’s call for help.

Shots: [Your original protagonist, Harry] Bosch has to be getting on a bit, so are we going to get any prequels when he was much younger or back to his wartime tunnel-rat adventures?

MC: That’s back with the short-story collection, but I’m actually working on a new Harry Bosch novel now [Nine Dragons], which should be out in October and has a big seed planted about Bosch’s younger days. I guess a young Harry Bosch tale will be about four years or so away, when he’s too old to carry a badge.

Shots: Has Jane Davis asked you to go on Twitter yet?

MC: Jane doesn’t like Twitter, but my U.S. publisher, Shannon Byrne, twitters on several accounts. I’ve been watching the Harlan Coben Twitter thing, and I’m not sure it’s for me.

Shots: Harlan (like us all) has a love/hate relationship with Twitter--but it does seem to be very popular and a good way of getting information out fast.

MC: He does seem to like to tell people he’s going to the Rangers’ games. I’m not sure I need to know that. No one needs to know that about me either, and Twitter killed the newspapers, so I’m not for it.

You can read the full Shots interview here.

Not One to Be Overlooked

In case you haven’t noticed yet, I can become extremely enthusiastic about some writers. And one of those whose work I’ve followed with near-religious fervor is Michael Connelly, most recently the author of The Overlook.

I first met Connelly (shown on the right in this photograph, with yours truly) back in 2002, when I interviewed him for the British e-zine Shots. At the time, he was promoting his novel City of Bones, and foremost on my mind was inquiring about the genesis of Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch, the Los Angeles detective who has become his most consistent protagonist. Connelly told me:

To come up with Harry Bosch I drew from everything. At the time I was a police reporter. I had contact with real LAPD detectives and a lot came from that, but I also drew from the movies, books, TV detectives that I loved over my lifetime. So there’s things that stretch back to Joseph Wambaugh, Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald, and people like that, and TV shows like Harry O and Kojak and even stuff like that, and then movies. I’ve always loved movies for example the 1971 [sic] The Long Goodbye, directed by Robert Altman, which most fans of Chandler think of as an abomination, but I enjoyed it as a movie. I have a real easy way of definitely separating movies and books.

At the time I was doing this--James Ellroy was just getting to be well known, and so there these stories about him and his mother and how the obvious (I think) psychology of him working out whatever happened with him and his mother (the damage) by writing murder stories. So I jumped to the idea of a guy with a similar background who works it out by solving murders. So there’s this aspect.

The one thing you haven’t heard me say here is that there’s me in him. At the very beginning there was none of me in him, other than we’re both left-handed--that was the little secret connection that we had. I consciously tried to create someone that was completely different from me, because I thought it would be more interesting to write about. And over the course of eight books, you can’t but help but have a little bit of me go into him, and back and fro.

But, if the truth be told, it wasn’t a Bosch book that first brought Connelly to my attention.

In 1996, I was down in Southend-on-Sea, England, roaming the aisles of a WH Smith bookstore (this was when Smiths was still a real bookseller), when I spotted an interesting-looking volume: The Poet, by an American writer named Connelly. I checked to make sure that it wasn’t No. 37 or No. 53 in a long-running series, and was relieved to find that it was a standalone. At the time, UK publisher Orion had already sent to bookstores the first four of Connelly’s Harry Bosch novels--The Black Echo (1992), The Black Ice (1993), The Concrete Blonde (1994), and The Last Coyote (1995)--but they had not been big sellers here. All had been given noirish and somewhat surreal covers. However, The Poet was different. In this case, a white snowy road framed the blackness of the cover. It was icy-white. It looked chilling. And as it turned out, The Poet was Michael Connelly’s breakthrough book in Britain.

I recall even now returning home from Smiths, grabbing a comfortable seat in my kitchen, and starting The Poet. Before I knew it, the door opened and my wife entered. A glance at my watch revealed that two hours had passed. I hadn’t even noticed. I went on to finish the book later that night.

My second fond encounter with Connelly came in 2003, during the Bouchercon convention in Las Vegas. That’s where he told me that he was working on a novel that was set partly in Vegas, would have Harry Bosch intersecting with the principal characters from The Poet, and would tie up some of that earlier book’s loose ends. Sure enough, the following year Connelly delivered The Narrows to readers, and was thereafter gracious enough to sit down for another interview with yours truly.

Connelly is now a major bestseller in Britain, published by Orion (which also has Harlan Coben and Ian Rankin in its stable, making for a formidable trio). His new novels traditionally hit the No. 1 spot on book-sales lists upon release. And his 2005 standalone, The Lincoln Lawyer, got a further assist from Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan, co-hosts of Britain’s extremely popular Richard & Judy TV-magazine show, who selected it as one of their annual book club choices.

His new Bosch book, The Overlook, has been equally well-received. I was excited last year to hear that Connelly would be serializing a novella in The New York Times Magazine. Regardless of how different it is at times from previous Bosch outings, I found The Overlook (which I originally read online, and has since been modified slightly for book publication) to be one of the strongest entries in that series. And I couldn’t help but be amused by the fact that the L.A. detective’s boss in that story bears the same name as a dear friend of mine, Larry Gandle, the assistant editor of Deadly Pleasures magazine. (To listen to an extract from The Overlook, click here.)

Knowing of my passion for Connelly’s work, Gaby Young of Orion recently arranged an opportunity for me to speak with the author once more, during the Californian’s brief visit to the Waterstone’s bookstore in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire. We discussed the technique of writing serial novels, the possibilities of Bosch retiring some time soon, and Connelly’s dips into the legal-thriller subgenre.

Ali Karim: Good to see you in the UK again! So, what have you been up to while visiting us this time? And, by the way, congratulations on The Lincoln Lawyer making the Richard & Judy shortlist.

Michael Connelly: Thanks, Ali. It’s kind of quick trip this time. [I’ve] got a few events here and in London, as well as a visit to Dublin, Ireland. I haven’t a lot of time compared to my usual visits. I come as often as I can; it averages every other book, but because of Lincoln Lawyer, I’ve been over more often to the UK recently.

AK: The Overlook was originally serialized in The New York Times. Did you write the 3,000-word sections as you went along, or did you have the book done and then split it into sections for weekly publication?

MC: A little of both, the New York Times people insisted that they get the whole manuscript before they would publish anything, as they wanted to know where it was going to go, and what it was going to say. But I did write it with the clause that each chapter had to be as close to 3,000 words as possible.

AK: I’ve read it in both forms--as a serial and as a finished book--and I noticed it has subtle changes in book form. Did it require much reworking for that edition?

MC: I really welcomed the reworking, because the writing to fill the 3,000 words per chapter is not the normal way I would write my books; that constriction was very difficult for me. When I write a chapter of a book, I don’t really care how many words there are, per se, or how many pages--I just want a chapter that propels the story forward, to continue the momentum. So when I wrote the serial for the Times, it sort of hampered the way I write, and the flow of the book, if you will. So I knew pretty early on when I was writing it as a serial that I would rework it later for publication as a book.

AK: Can you tell us where the idea for this serial novel came from?

MC: The New York Times started doing this a couple of years ago, as a sort of nod to [Charles] Dickens, [who serialized his novels in the newspapers of his era]. And to be fair, that’s how some books were published in the past. [The Times folks] wanted to try to see if it would draw more people to read their Sunday magazine, so they approached me to do this awhile back, but the timing was not right then. A year later, they asked again and I agreed. They think that crime-thriller fiction lends itself to this serial-type of format, as in genre work there is often a hook in each chapter. That’s what they were looking for--stories that would bring people back each week.

AK: Most importantly, did you enjoy writing The Overlook as much as I enjoyed reading it?

MC: [Laughs] I can’t say I enjoyed writing it as much as my other books, but I am flattered that you enjoyed it. Writing this way is rather like having a boss watching over your shoulder yelling “3,000 words, 3,000 words, 3,000 words.” That I didn’t enjoy. But I really enjoyed rewriting it for novel publication. As I get to look at it again with a totally fresh mind and take it apart and rebuild it and write it the way I prefer, with the pacing that I wanted and also throw in some more current events to make it topical.

AK: Such as the 2006 polonium poisoning of Russian Alexander Litvinenko in London.

MC: Exactly. In fact, the timeframe was shifted by a year for the novel, compared to the serial. In fact, within the middle section of the book, I made some quite large changes, even introducing a whole new character that wasn’t in the serialization--that was something I wanted to do [when I was writing it for the Times], but just didn’t have the space or words to do. They wanted 14 to 16 chapters, so I added significant additional material [to the finished novel], and that was what I enjoyed most.

AK: Did you return to L.A. during your writing of The Overlook, as I know you relocated to Florida after we last talked.

MC: Yes, I return quite a bit. Until recently, I kept an apartment there. But I don’t miss L.A., as I am back there so often.

AK: I was amused to see that Harry’s old friend Rachel Walling, who last appeared in Echo Park [2006], returns in The Overlook. What made you made bring her back?

MC: [Laughs] It usually comes from my decision as to who do I want to spend a year with. And ... do I want to spend a year building a new character, or revisiting an old one? Basically, I am looking for what will keep me interested and excited, to motivate me to get up early, to write. Of course, Bosch is a main character, but the supporting characters are critical in making the book work also, and I really like to explore secondary characters. There was a lot of unfinished business between Harry and Rachel in Echo Park, so I thought I’d explore these issues. But the reality was that as The Overlook takes place within 12 hours, [and] with the 3,000-word chapters there’s still a lot of unexplored territory left. [Laughs]

AK: Harry Bosch must be moving into his late 50s by now. And you may laugh at this, but there are rumors circulating that Bosch, like Ian Rankin’s [Detective Inspector John] Rebus, could be coming to the end of the road, and that Walling will be taking over. Is there any truth to those rumors?

MC: I don’t know about “taking over.” I hope that the trajectory of the series is as close to reality as possible. I’ve tried to treat Harry and the [L.A. police] department as real as possible. I live by that principle, and so Harry won’t be able to do the job more than a few more years, due to his age in the LAPD. So I am facing that prospect, which may mean that it may not be the end of the series, but could be the end of him very soon, as he will have to hand back his badge. And perhaps it will be the end of the series--who knows? As far as anyone taking over? Not sure about Walling taking over, perhaps it could even be his new partner. Harry is mentoring him ...

AK: Yes, Iggy Ferras is an interesting partner. But without spoiling things, do you really reckon that he’s going to survive Bosch? Bosch’s partners often have a tough time.

MC: [Laughs] You’re right. Some of Harry’s partners don’t do well, but I like that character, and I am exploring him currently. And I reckon he’ll be around a little while at least. But then again I don’t look too much further into the future ...

AK: OK, here’s a tough question but one I have to ask: As Harry’s creator, how do you account for his popularity?

MC: I think it is the thing about him being the outsider looking in. He’s an outsider in an insider’s job, which in many ways connects us all, as we all wonder what’s going wrong on the inside, and on some level we all feel like outsiders. I think there is an empathic connection between Harry Bosch and the reader, which I consider is his appeal.

AK: I really enjoyed your collection of journalistic essays, Crime Beat: A Decade of Covering Cops and Killers [2006]. Can you tell us ow this book came about?

MC: It wasn’t my decision to release Crime Beat. It came via a small publisher in Los Angeles, who asked me if I wanted to get involved in a book of journalistic essays of mine. So to get any control I had to join him, as I didn’t have any control of the material, because the newspapers have the rights to [those stories]. The publisher had collected the pieces and got the rights to publish them, and so I got involved to help him pick the best stories, and therefore we picked stories that had a subtle echo to the fiction I would eventually write.

AK: I loved protagonist Mickey Haller and The Lincoln Lawyer. Where did that legal thriller come from?

MC: It was a long time coming. First of all, I love the legal thriller as a subgenre and had been looking for years for something that could become a story that could get me into that field. There are some great big titans of publishing involved in legal thrillers, so I wanted something that would be unique and be mine. It sort of fell into my lap, when I met a real “Lincoln lawyer” at a baseball game in Los Angeles. He told me how he operates as an attorney, and before the conversation was over I knew that this was my way in. It, however, took me a few years before I had the confidence to give it a go, as I was not so confident in that world as I am, say, with that of the LAPD and Harry Bosch.

I needed to do a huge amount of research and spend time with lawyers, sitting in courtrooms and so forth ... When it finally came time to write the book, it came very quickly, as (a) I had been researching it for so long, and (b) I was excited by this new character--a clean slate. Whereas, say, with Harry Bosch I’m dragging around 12 books of back story, with Mickey Haller--he was brand new with no baggage. When I go with a new character, I can usually write much faster, so in that particular year I squeezed out two books--the Haller book, as well as a Bosch novel [The Closers].

AK: I heard you’re doing a follow-up to The Lincoln Lawyer. True?

MC: Yes--but it’s not really a follow-up, it’s a Haller book and even Bosch makes a small appearance. But at this stage I haven’t a title.

AK: Finally, I thought you’d given up on screenwriting after we last talked. But is it true that you’ve been commissioned to write a screenplay for a film version of the [1980s] Edward Woodward TV vehicle, The Equalizer?

MC: Yes, I told you that I gave up because of the difficulty in that world called Hollywood. [Laughs] And at times I feel like telling you that I’m ready to give up again. [Laughs] Seriously, the screenplay is nearly done, [with] about a couple of weeks to go to deadline, and hopefully it might get made. Then again, someone else might do a rewrite. It’s been an interesting experience. These things help me focus or refocus on what I enjoy the most, which is writing the books. So, hopefully I’ll finish this thing next week and get back to the Haller book, which I had to stop to fit in the screenplay. I’m raring to get back to it.

* * *

For your viewing pleasure, I’ve put together some bits of video from Michael Connelly’s Milton Keynes visit. Here he talks about The Overlook. Here he talks about writing a serial novel. And here Connelly talks about his process of naming characters.

The End of Harry Bosch

If you haven’t been paying attention, today brings us the final, 16th installment of Michael Connelly’s New York Times Magazine serial, “The Overlook.” This Sunday fiction series, which features Connelly’s detective Harry Bosch, received a good deal of publicity before it commenced its run in September, but doesn’t seem to have generated much buzz since. Strange, considering that this novella has every bit as much personality and drama as Connelly’s longer Bosch stories. The author sums up the tale’s plot on his Web site:

In his first case since he left the LAPD’s Open Unsolved Unit for the prestigious Homicide Special squad, Harry Bosch is called out to investigate a murder that may have chilling consequences for national security.

A doctor with access to a dangerous radioactive substance is found murdered on the overlook above the Mulholland Dam. Retracing his steps, Harry learns that a large quantity of radioactive cesium was stolen shortly before the doctor’s death. With the cesium in unknown hands, Harry fears the murder could be part of a terrorist plot to poison a major American city.

Soon, Bosch is in a race against time, not only against the culprits, but also against the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI (in the form of Harry’s one-time lover Rachel Walling), who are convinced that this case is too important for the likes of the LAPD. It is Bosch’s job to prove them all wrong.

Currently, all 16 installments of “The Overlook” are available through the New York Times Magazine Web site, together with a page where Connelly answers questions put to him by readers. However, this story will soon be published in book form, with “new, never-before published material,” as the author promises. It’s scheduled for release in the States at the end of May, and in the UK in June.

The Skinny on Connelly

Stacy Alesi, aka The Book Bitch, has posted an interesting blog item about her recent encounter with author Michael Connelly at a bookstore in Delray Beach, Florida. Two things stand out:

• The news that Connelly is planning to write another story featuring Mickey Haller, the protagonist from The Lincoln Lawyer (2005). “However,” Alesi notes, “when I asked if the two series--Harry Bosch & Mickey Haller--would at some point be merged into one, Connelly was quick to point out that Haller is not a series, and Bosch is the only series he writes. He did concede that since they are half brothers, at some point there will undoubtedly be a book where they come together.”

• And Alesi’s question to the author regarding a New York Times piece from October 16, in which books critic Janet Maslin stated, “And Mr. Connelly now does some of his writing in Mr. [Raymond] Chandler’s old apartment, a place he uses for inspiration. No living crime writer has a better right to be there.” The Book Bitch writes: “Connelly was quick to point out that it was a mistake--yes, in the NY Times. He does rent an apartment in Los Angeles but it isn’t Chandler’s apartment. However, there is a connection--the apartment is at the address of Chandler’s famous fictional character, Philip Marlowe. Connelly said he didn’t think that Chandler had ever stepped foot in it.”

Connelly Hits the Funny Pages

It seems like we’ve been waiting for Michael Connelly’s The Overlook for a long time. (The Rap Sheet first reported on it back in June.)

But the wait is finally over. This original, 16-part novella was commissioned by The New York Times Magazine as part of the Times’ “Sunday Serial,” the lead item in the magazine’s “Funny Pages” section.

According to a press release sent out by The Times:

“The Funny Pages” includes “The Strip,” exclusive full-color weekly strips featuring stars of the graphic novel; a new comic by Seth, whose credits include the ongoing series, “Palooka-Ville,” makes it debut. The non-fiction humor column, “True-Life Tales,” also continues.

Originally scheduled to begin running in August, we’re glad we don’t have any longer to wait. Though how will we be able to cool our jets for 15 weeks to get to the end of this latest Harry Bosch tale?

Part one of The Overlook will appear in the print edition of Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, but is available online now.

There Ain’t Nothin’ Like Him Nowhere*

There’s an interesting and not wholly sycophantic profile of Michael Connelly in Canada’s National Post newspaper. Its author, Robert Fulford, provides lots of background on Connelly’s best-known protagonist, Los Angeles police detective Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch, and explains how the latest paperback release from Connelly, The Lincoln Lawyer, fits neatly into Bosch’s world (at least neatly for those who’ve read and remember early Bosch books). He also marvels at how much Connelly can write, including a new novel (Echo Park) due out in late September and a coming Bosch novella to be serialized in The New York Times Magazine. And though Fulford was signficantly less than impressed by Crime Beat, a recent hardcover collection of 22 of Connelly’s old newspaper stories (“only an obsessive Connelly aficionado will bother with these mostly tiresome pieces”), he seems thoroughly charmed by this novelist’s fondness for the City of Angels:

Connelly once called his novels love letters to Los Angeles. In Angels Flight (1999) he briefly forgets the crime story so that Bosch can ruminate on a remarkable 1883 [sic] building now partly used by the LAPD’s Internal Affairs division and famous for its Italianate exterior, wrought-iron filigree interiors and grillwork-cage elevators. It’s a kind of architectural masterpiece, designed by George Wyman, a $5-a-week draftsman without a formal degree who did nothing else of interest, before or after.

The building does nothing for the plot, but it draws us a little closer to Harry Bosch, whose character is Connelly’s long-term project. Bosch identifies with Wyman, a humble designer who seized on one grand opportunity and carved a place in history. Bosch loves the idea of a man who leaves his mark when given a great chance. Has Bosch had such a chance? Did he miss it? He hopes his glowing moment still lies in the future, waiting for him: “He had yet to take his one shot.”

It’s worth raising the question with Connelly in an interview sometime, whether he really believes in this concept of the one shot, and if so, whether he thinks he has taken his own one shot yet. As hard as it is to believe that he wouldn’t think he’s already made a mark, that sort of query is just the sort to draw out some new side of a thoughtful guy like Connelly.

* Adapted from a line in Randy Newman’s song “I Love L.A.”